Literature Review and Proposal

Wilmington University- IST 8101

Running Head: ORACLE DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR 1

ORACLE DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR 12

Table of Contents Literature Review 4 Introduction 4 Skills and Qualifications of a Database Administrator 4 Roles of Database Administrator 5 Oracle Database Administration 6 Proposal 9 Iteration One: Introduction the Company’s Organizational Structure 9 Iteration Two: Introduction to the Company’s Systems 9 Iteration Three: Accounting for the Activities Performed As an Oracle Database Administrator 9 Iteration Four: Project Presentation and Challenges encountered 9 References 11

List of Figures

In the modern day world, the quantity of information and data that organizations must derive from the data is increasing abruptly, and thus, there is a need for successful application of information based strategies (Aiken, Gillenson, Zhang, & Rafner, 2011). The increase in data in most organizations requires data management and data administration practices. The data management and data administration are successful due to the constant use of database management systems (Aiken et al., 2011). Most organizations use database management systems to manage their data, and the presence of a database administrator ensures that the database management systems run smoothly (Tahir & Brezillon, 2011). A database administrator is the information engineer accountable for the continuing operation functionality and the efficiency of an organization’s database and the applications that use the database (Tahir & Brezillon, 2011).

Database administrators must hold the knowledge of databases and database management systems. Oracle database administrators have to be familiar with the intricacies of Oracle databases (Langley, 2007). Oracle has introduced the wizard development environment that aid administrators to develop simple applications. Oracle qualifications are particularly marketable since employers are willing to pay more for such skills (Langley, 2007). The database administrators must possess computer science knowledge, strong organizational skills, and logical and analytical thinking skills (Tech Directions, 2010). Database administrators must be conversant with database systems, relational database management systems, Oracle and Standard Query Languages (Mason, 2013).

Database administration is a continuous process which regularly involves numerous actors within an organization. The main actor in database administration is the database administrator who ensures that there is smooth operational functionality and efficiency of an organization’s databases (Tahir & Brezillon, 2013). The database administrator ensures that there is a smooth functionality of the applications that accesses the databases. The database administrator is involved in a variety of tasks. The database administrator designs, monitors database performance and tuning, checks for database security, backup, and recovery, ensures database integrity and availability, and performs database migration (Tahir & Brezillon, 2013). In addition, the database administrator must be in a position to regularly analyze and correct failures arising from the large set of processes for database administration tasks, specifically incident solving (Tahir & Brezillon, 2013).

The database administrators play a big role in developing the set of procedures for incident solving in the database. However, the database administrators have to work under temporal and financial limitations (Tahir & Brezillon, 2011). Similarly, the database administrators are constantly readjusting the incident solving procedures to manage a large number of specific situations that differ from the standard situations by some contextual elements (Tahir & Brezillon, 2011). Database administrators spend most of their time in database management in most organizations. Database administrators solve all complex problems and master all database management fundamentals. This requires the database administrators to be conversant with all database management systems such as Oracle, Standard Query Language Server, and Sybase among others (Tahir & Brezillon, 2011).

An Oracle database is made up of an amalgamation of Oracle instance and data files on the system (Rani, Singh, & Sharma, 2011). The Oracle instance is the memory architecture and background processes. Oracle database uses memory for its processes. The total memory allocated to the database is grouped into System Global Area and Program Global Area (Rani et al., 2011). Oracle is a Relational Database Management Systems that runs on more than 80 platforms (Langley, 2007). Oracle Relational Database Management Systems refer to the entire Oracle environment that includes Oracle control files, data files, online redo logs, and other files (Akhtar, Buchholtz, Ryan, & Setty, 2012). Oracle provides logins for authorized users to connect to the database using usernames and any operations that the user carries out are controlled by the privileges granted to the login (Akhtar et al., 2012). In Oracle database management systems, the database administrator is granted all the system privileges needed to administer the database (Paci, Mece, & Xhuvani, 2012). In normal situations, users have the privilege of inserting and modifying data but the database administrator can modify, delete, insert, create, and update data or database objects (Paci et al., 2012).

The responsibility of a database administrator is to recover databases during disasters as well as preparing for the possibility of media, hardware, and software failure (Akhtar et al., 2012). The database administrator ensures that the database is available to users at all times and ensures that there is no data loss in case of failures. The database administrator is involved in database backup and recovery and must develop a comprehensive backup plan for databases in order to conduct effective backup management (Akhtar et al., 2012). The database administrators should always be alerted for failed backups and must ensure that the backups are rerun within the minimum time possible. It is always necessary to backup data to physical disks and archive the data to tape for disaster recovery process (Akhtar et al., 2012).

The primary role of an Oracle server is to keep the Random Access Memory (RAM) demands of the database and the database connection below the amount of physical RAM (Rani et al., 2011). The administrator is able to control the amount of the RAM used by the System Global Area in an Oracle environment by issuing alter system commands. Thus, in the tuning process of the database, the database administrator is responsible for adjusting the dynamic configuration of the System Random Access Memory (Rani et al., 2011).

An Oracle database contains metadata which is contained in the data dictionary and database views. The database dictionary gives information about every object in the database such as Oracle database users, their privileges, roles, and auditing information (Cooke, 2014). A database administrator creates the profiles of the database system users. The database administrator creates the profiles which use username and passwords which involve a set of characters (Cooke, 2014).

A database administrator monitors the health of the database server making sure that the routine maintenance is performed, ensuring the event log is maintained for database errors, and ensuring the server is running under optimal performance (Tech Directions, 2010). The database administrator works with developers in helping with the overall database design including normalized databases, assisting developers in assigning proper indexes, and helping in the creation of triggers and stored procedures (Tech Directions, 2010). The main critical responsibility of the database administrator is the database recovery and backup. The database administrator must develop the recovery procedures for each database and ensuring that the backup schedules meet the recovery requirements (Tech Directions, 2010).

Oracle database administrators handle megabyte and gigabyte of database data in most large multinational corporations and mid-sized companies (Sorensen & Angelis, 2005). Polakowski (2009) indicates that the role of a database administrator is to ensure that the data in database management systems is backed up. The database administrator monitors the access to the system by setting up rules and roles to make sure the data is only accessible to authorized individuals. The database administrator ensures that the integrity of company’s data is constantly maintained and cross-checked at all times (Polakowski, 2009). In addition, database administrators must be aware of tuning whereby the database administrators tweak the database systems using different languages to make sure the systems are operating smoothly (Polakowski, 2009). Figure 1 demonstrates the database administration environment.

The goal of this action research is to provide a framework for the activities that I would conduct during the internship period. The action research will focus to indicate the requirements, roles and responsibilities of an Oracle database administrator . I aim to progress with the study while focusing on the cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting on every iteration’s activities.

In this iteration, I would familiarize myself with company’s organization structure and the working environment. I would seek to determine the daily activities of the system administration department in the company.

In this iteration, I would be acquainted with the company’s systems. To achieve this, I would meet the team of database administrators specifically the senior database administrators in the company to seek important insights from them. I would also focus on familiarizing myself with database management systems and the programming languages used.

Under the third iteration, I would be involved in the daily activities of an Oracle database administrator. This would involve taking an account the activities carried out, and the knowledge gained as an Oracle database administrator.

This iteration would involve presenting some of the database projects created to illustrate the skills obtained from the internship. The iteration would also discuss the achievement of the internship and the challenges encountered during the internship. The iteration would also indicate the recommendations for improvement.

Iteration One: Introduction to the Company’s Organizational Structure

Reflect

Act

Plan

Observe

Iteration Two: Introduction to the company’s systems

Reflect

Act

Plan

Observe

Iteration Three: Accounting for the activities performed as an Oracle Database Administrator

Reflect

Act

Plan

Observe

Iteration Four: Project Presentation and challenges encountered

Reflect

Act

Plan

Observe

Aiken, P., Gillenson, M.L., Zhang, X., & Rafner, D. (2011). Data management and data